Jesus the religious revolutionary
JESUS – (uncovering the life, teachings, and relevance of a religious revolutionary)
By Marcus Borg Harper ISBN: 9780060594459
Marcus Borg’s latest book, now available in this country, is a book that will appeal to a wide spectrum of British Christians. It is an ideal book to invite those Christians who have not yet engaged with the new paradigm thinking to join a PCN group to discuss it in a series of discussions.
It is well written – not at all “heavy” – and has the potential to re-engage many with this fresh and positive understanding of the Jesus of the gospels.
It is written for an American audience, and so addresses and challenges in a very constructive way, some of the pre-occupations of those who take their Bibles literally. He explains the two paradigms, and gives a helpful account of the development in biblical scholarship over the past 300 hundred years.
His explanation of the pre-Easter and post-Easter Jesus, are clear and helpful to those coming to these concepts for the first time.
His descriptions of how he and other scholars make judgments on what is probably history, and what is more likely to be metaphor, are illuminating.
His account of the social and religious conditions of Galilee and Jerusalem in the life-time of Jesus, with its domination system which oppressed the peasants, is very helpful.
When Borg comes to explain Jesus’ activity as a teacher and healer, grounded in his experience of mystical prayer, I felt (even after 50 years of personal and professional engagement with Jesus) that I was encountering him in a new way.
Jesus’ teaching arose from his own spiritual experience – not theory. Borg emphasises Jesus’ ministry was grounded in his personal experience, beginning with his own vision of the Spirit, grounded in deep silent prayer. This is a type of prayer Borg needs to explain to his audience, many of whom are familiar mostly with spoken extempore prayer.
The imagery of Light was very important to this Jewish prophet and mystic. “Mystics know the immediacy of access to God….God is accessible to experience apart from mediators, that is, apart from institution and tradition.”
Borg explores the ministry of Jesus in rural Galilee, the journey from there to Jerusalem, and finally the confrontation with the Jewish and Roman authorities that led to his crucifixion.
Jesus’ message is grounded in the here and now. The kingdom of God that Jesus taught, was, according to Borg, not something in the hereafter, but in building a better world in this one. His God is a God of compassion, with a passion for justice, which he illustrated in a variety of ways.
His communication methods include the parables, and the one-line memorable sayings he adopted as a wisdom teacher within Judaism. He used metaphor a lot, a vivid poetic way of communicating that some people are blind though sighted, dead though alive, in exile, or in bondage, and he teaches them how to be free, to see, to be alive, and to be at home.
He challenged the traditions that bound so many to structures of family, wealth, honour and purity in ways that stunted their spiritual creativity and potential growth.
He taught the people to centre in God as a beloving God, as he also practiced a ministry of healing and exorcism. An emphasis on fellowship meals was also a prominent feature of his way of doing things. Who he chose to eat with, demonstrated his inclusiveness, as it courted criticism from the purists.
He was a revolutionary who advocated non-violent resistance in a variety of ways. With dramatic prophetic actions he rode into Jerusalem from one direction, as Pilate and his soldiers rode in to the city from the opposite direction. Similarly he overturned the tables in the Temple, as part of affirming that the kingdom of God challenged the domination system of the empire and its taxation stranglehold on peasant life.
Borg gives his account of why and how he believes the infancy and the resurrection narratives came to be written. As he makes the point more than once, believe what you like happened at these time, but recognize the powerful truths that metaphors convey. As a historian he treats the most spectacular stories as metaphorical narratives and not as memory, but he is sensitive to those who feel insecure with this line of thinking. That is an important part of why this book is one that has the chance to engage Christians of a traditional way of thinking with the new paradigm.
It is the book that we will be reading in our Middlesbrough Book Club called “Journeyings” of which I am currently the only PCN Member, but which I hope will become a Tees Valley PCN Group. We recently spent five sessions discussing Jack Spong’s book “Jesus for the Non-Religious”. Spong spends three quarters of his book pulling the house down, and his attempts at rebuilding are disappointing. Borg on the other hand is adapting and modernising his building throughout his book, and the outcome is very appealing.
Michael Wright
01642 851919
michael.wright80@virgin.net